EverythingHealth is designed to address the rapid changes in Science, Medicine, Health and Healing in the 21st Century. This site will sift through the vast amount of confusing data and simplify issues that are of interest to everyone interested in a healthy life and longevity. The writings on EverythingHealth are entirely my own views and opinions.

Thursday, July 7, 2011

Massage Therapy Relieves Chronic Back Pain

The Group Health Research Institute of Seattle, Washington has published a study in Annals of Internal Medicine that showed massage therapy may effectively reduce or relieve chronic back pain. I am a big believer and supporter of massage therapy and have wondered why it is not a covered benefit for treating back and neck pain. Even medical benefits savings plans offered by employers (where you put aside your own pre-tax dollars to be used for medical care) do not allow massage. Patients who get massage for musculoskeletal conditions do better and utilize less pain meds, yet is is seldom prescribed and rarely covered by any insurance plan.

This study confirmed what I have known for a long time. They looked at relaxation massage and structural massage, which focuses on correcting soft-tissue abnormalities. At 10 weeks they found that participants (age 20-65 years) who had chronic low back pain responded to both types of massage. In fact, the patients receiving massage were twice as likely as those receiving usual care to report significant improvement in both pain and function that lasted 6 months.

Back pain is one of the most common maladies of humans. It's time we recognize the benefit of "laying on of hands" by a skilled massage therapist.

16 comments:

I went to Massage Therapy school and back pain was my main focus. (In my state it's more medically focused because the State Medical Board issues a limited medical license.)

Between the positional releases and neuromuscular approaches, it seems to me that we should be able to create a comprehensive approach to back pain. However, what has been lacking in the science is an effort to identify specific techniques.

I have had back pain myself and basic 'buff n' fluff' massage was not adequate. The failure of the study to find a distinction between the kind of massage makes me wonder what level of practitioners were used, what modalities etc...

I would like to see a study look at QL releases vs Psoas releases vs Trigger Point therapy etc... That would start to get interesting and hone in on what really works.

Thanks for providing such a helpful information here.The only thing that helped me with chronic neck and back pain was physiotherapy. I wish you a speedy recovery because it is such a terrible thing to go through.

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I agree with you and also think that a massage therapy can surely help us with pain management as same as the physical therapy treatment. I must say that it is an interesting article and I really enjoyed reading it.

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I am an Internal Medicine physician who has practiced for over 25 years in Northern California. I was previously the President of the SF Medical Society and Chief of Staff at a large academic medical center. I am currently the Chief Executive Officer for a large Physician and health care provider group in Northern
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